It's that special time of year again when we ask you to open your wallets, dear listener, and make a tax-deductible donation to Reason's annual webathon.
In this special video episode of The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman respond to an array of listener questions.
More Christians in the liberty movement? Is it a weird time for libertarianism? How to best celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States? Plus, Nick's treasured pen, Katherine's socks, Peter's power of the Mai Tai, and Matt's favorite pizza.
All this and so much more on this week's extra special episode of The Reason Roundtable.
Now go donate, you wonderful swashbuckling bunch of free-thinking freaks!
Audio production by Ian Keyser; assistant production by Hunt Beaty.
Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve
Videography by Isaac Reese, Justin Zuckerman, and Adam Czarnecki; edited by Adam Czarnecki.
The post Ask <I>Reason</I> Magazine's Editors Anything: Webathon 2023! appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>If ever there was a single policy that represented everything wrong with government, it was Prohibition. The Noble Experiment, in which booze was banned in America for 13 years, was a testbed for practically every awful domestic policy: restrictions on what individuals can consume and put in their bodies, demands that businesses large and small cease or alter their operations, an overbearing police state, and even tax policy. A decade-plus of alcohol restrictions also made drinks and drink culture a lot worse.
Prohibition was enacted under the premise that government knows best—and that it should enforce that knowledge at the point of a gun. The result was one of the most socially and economically corrosive policies in American history.
More than 100 years after the start of Prohibition, we still celebrate its end every December 5, with Repeal Day.
There's a reason for that: The end of terrible government policy is always cause for cheer.
That's what Reason works for all year round. And that's why you should support us this Repeal Day.
Give to Reason, because modern-day prohibitionists are still at large, and we can't let them win.
Give today at this link because it's Repeal Day, and because you can make your donation dollars go even further thanks to an incredibly generous $25,000 matching donation from a married pair of Reason supporters.
Every dollar you donate now goes twice as far. It's two for one! Call it happy hour, but for Reason's webathon.
In 2022, we no longer have alcohol Prohibition. But we do have the eternal and unwinnable war on drugs, which looks an awful lot like Prohibition but for a different set of substances: There's the Government Knows Best mentality, the moralist's zeal that anything fun or pleasurable must be stopped, the regulatory overbearance—and behind it all, the stochastically violent police state that enforces the country's drug laws. Tragically, infuriatingly, and predictably, there's a body count too.
The war on drugs reaches into so many facets of American life, from tax policy to health care to criminal justice. Prohibition isn't really over. It just goes by a different name.
Donate to Reason to help us fight the brutal, stupid, brutally stupid drug war in all its forms.
Today's prohibitionists are always looking to extend their reach, from sure-to-fail crackdowns on vaping, electronic cigarettes, and flavored smokes to proposals of new rules and restrictions on alcohol itself.
There are even links between Prohibition and pandemic policy. While COVID-19 raged, some distillers switched from making booze to making hand sanitizer, which in the early days of the pandemic was in short supply. In response, the Food and Drug Administration imposed a huge, unexpected fee on those distilleries. The decision was eventually reversed after coverage at Reason.
The links between Prohibition and the pandemic go even further. Prohibition was a radical social experiment, in which thousands of hubs of local social activity were suddenly upended. Yes, I'm talking about bars. Before Prohibition, bars were central to social and political life in many American cities. They were where people met to talk, make friends, share information, find work—and, yes, have a drink. And then, almost overnight, they were shut down, massively disrupting informal social networks and reducing innovation in the process.
Does that sound familiar? During the pandemic, forced closures and capacity limits shut down or severely restricted not only bars but schools, churches, professional gatherings, sports leagues, movie theaters, and just about every other form of in-person social activity. We're still tallying the cost, but it's already clear that the toll was enormous, especially on children.
So this Repeal Day, raise a glass and donate to Reason to keep today's prohibitionists at bay. Take advantage of that incredible $25,000 match!
Reason's fight against Prohibition never ends—and your support makes it possible.
The post Raise a Glass and Donate to <em>Reason</em> To Keep the Prohibitionists From Winning appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Our cherished listeners of The Reason Roundtable delivered yet another batch of both thoughtful and off-the-wall questions for editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Nick Gillespie to consider during this special ask-me-anything-style podcast episode.
This is all in service of the annual Reason Webathon, during which we attempt to casually coax you into making a tax-deductible donation to the nonprofit foundation that publishes our work.
Is there any hope for transitioning to a fully market-oriented health system? What are the editors' favorite four-dimensional platonic solids? Will Peter make a Star Wars: Andor–themed cocktail at 1.5x speed? And will Katherine have to fire her co-hosts already?
All this and more on a rollicking episode of The Reason Roundtable that's both "earball" and eyeball friendly. Donate now and help us continue to bring that much-needed "Free Minds and Free Markets" perspective to your weekly media consumption!
Videography by Jim Epstein, Isaac Reese, and Justin Zuckerman; Edited by Adam Czarnecki; Sound editing by Ian Keyser
The post You Asked, We Answered With Libertarian Explanations, Animals, and…Cookie Dough? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Got questions, comments, insults, or compliments for the Reason team?
This Thursday starting at 1 p.m. Eastern, join Reason's Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller for live interviews with Katherine Mangu-Ward, Robby Soave, Meredith Bragg and Austin Bragg, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, and Billy Binion. What are their favorite pieces from 2022? How did they join the staff? What are their plans for the coming year?
This is part of Reason's Annual Webathon, a weeklong event in which we ask our readers, viewers, and listeners to support our principled, libertarian journalism. All donations made through the webathon link or paid superchats are tax-deductible.
Watch and leave your questions and comments on the embedded video above or on Reason's Facebook page.
The post Meet the <em>Reason</em> Editors: Livestream appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>I'm excited as hell to ask you to donate during Reason's annual webathon, the one week each year where we ask you to support our efforts to advance libertarian ideas and policies with fully tax-deductible donations. And I'm even more excited to announce a massive $100,000 matching grant from a supporter—which means that every dollar (or satoshis; yes, we take bitcoin!) goes twice as far for the next hundred grand in donations! If you can't wait, go here right now to check out swag levels and make a contribution.
But first, riddle me this? What was your favorite Reason video of 2022? Of all time? Since I've been with our video platform since it launched in late 2007, I think about this sort of question all the time. We've released over 3,000 videos that have been viewed 260 million times on YouTube alone, so there's a lot to choose from, starting with that early one with the commute from hell, that helicopter ride, and Drew Carey (more on him later).
My answers: For this year, it's our interview with Monty Python's John Cleese at FreedomFest, where the master comedian talked about how "wokeness" is the enemy of creativity—and that creativity is something that can be taught, a skill not unlike carpentry or plumbing. The Q&A clearly tickled more than the funny bones of our audience, as it's racked up 1.6 million views since its August 1 release, making it our single-biggest hit released this year.
And my favorite video of all time? This one is tougher, but I'm going with 2013's "UPS vs. Ultimate Whiteboard Remix," which parodied a popular ad series while laying out an incredibly sophisticated argument about labor law and government regulations in just two minutes. I wrote and performed the script, based on a Reason article by Mercatus Center scholar Veronique de Rugy, and Meredith Bragg provided the absolutely magical animation and editing. This one was a finalist for a National Magazine Award, the highest honor in our space, and I especially love the way we were able to perfectly mimic a super-expensive TV commercial with a green screen and a few thousand dollars worth of camera and editing equipment (cheap technology keeps remaking the world and expanding freedom in all sorts of great ways, as Jim Epstein wrote in this tribute to the Sony VX1000 camera).
In 2022, our videos have so far generated a mind-boggling 24.3 million views on YouTube, our main distribution platform. The content ranges from long-form interviews like the one with Cleese and ones with Jay Bhattacharya and Glenn Greenwald, to incredible documentaries such as Zach Weissmueller's "Forget the Great Reset, Embrace the Great Escape" to the comedy stylings of Austin Bragg and Meredith Bragg and Remy to our new weekly livestreams featuring leading thinkers and policymakers.
This is the sort of work your money supports. Reason is here, day in and day out, making the principled case for a more libertarian world in which all of us have more power and control over our own lives. And since 2007, we've been using video to supplement our arguments in the marketplace of ideas. Our video platform is the brainchild of Reason Foundation trustee, comedy legend, and Price Is Right host Drew Carey, who suggested we experiment with making online documentaries at a time when most magazines were still struggling to adapt to the World Wide Web. "Your stories make people think," Drew said, "but with video, we can make people feel too and gain an even-deeper appreciation for the power of 'Free Minds and Free Markets.'" Drew hosted the first dozen-plus videos we put out 15 years ago and of course he headlined our award-winning series, Reason Saves Cleveland with Drew Carey—which, come to think of it, might just be my favorite Reason video of all time.
If you like what we're doing—and make sure to list your favorite videos in the comments!—then please make a donation right now, when the $100,000 matching grant will magically double its value! Thanks for your support!
The post What Was Your Favorite Reason Video of 2022? And How Can You Get More of Them? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Today is Giving Tuesday, and that means the start of Reason's annual webathon week, in which we ask you—our readers, listeners, and viewers—to donate to support Reason's award-winning journalism.
This year we're hoping to raise $400,000. Your hard-earned, inflation-adjusted dollars can help us meet that goal. There is some pretty cool swag on offer at various giving levels, including Reason stress balls (obvious), digital subscriptions (packed with good stuff), a Reason calendar (because time is a flat circle), NPR-style tote bags (including one that says "Taxation Is Theft" for our anarchist pals, or a logo tote for the minarchists). At the top tiers we're offering invitations to Reason Weekend for first-timers and/or lunch with an editor (pick me! I'm great at eating lunch!).
You can get the skinny on swag at the donation page.
Donations of any size will get you special access to our annual Ask Us Anything edition of The Reason Roundtable. Include proof of your donation when you submit a question to roundtable@reason.com and you'll skip the line. Questions (and donations) must be in by Wednesday morning to make the cutoff.
The goodies are just icing on the cake, of course. All week, you'll be seeing posts from Reason editors about why you should support Reason's important work. I want to kick off the week by talking about something that sets Reason apart from the competition: We do real, honest-to-Lanny investigative journalism. Because sometimes it takes a freedom-minded worldview to see stories that others don't.
Reporter C.J. Ciaramella is our Freedom of Information Act ninja, and he manages to get ahold of an astonishing amount of material for free through sheer cussedness and persistence. But you'll be shocked—shocked—to learn that sometimes governments aren't too keen on handing over evidence of their own incompetence or worse. Cash helps speed those queries along, and it pays for lawyers when the process stalls.
We sent Associate Editor Christian Britschgi into the D.C. metro system to report on the system's slow, tragic decline. Sure, train tickets only cost a couple of dollars a pop, but we had to factor in the possibility that we'd have to send in a rescue team after him.
And this month we sent three reporters to Kennedy Space Center to talk with a NASA engineer about why its Artemis rocket is blowing through budgets and deadlines at a time when SpaceX is finding cost-saving measures like reusing its boosters instead of chucking them into the ocean. For their upcoming documentary on NASA's wasteful spending, we used a pair of Canon C70 Cinema cameras with telephoto lenses to capture footage of Artemis. Without your support for gear and travel, we would have had to rely on NASA for stock footage and second-hand interviews. Stay tuned for that video, but here's a sneak peek:
@reasonmagazine If it's permissible, even patriotic, to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on #space exploration and travel, surely we can allow a small group of wealthy people to spend their own money on the same project? Visit Reason.com to read our special edition space issue. ???? #spacex #nasa #rockets #science
Finally, sending Senior Editor Stephanie Slade into the bowels of the national conservative movement isn't cheap: Buy her plane tickets—and maybe the booze in which she will drown her sorrows after she files one of her thoughtful, deeply informed pieces on the right's (and the left's) alarming authoritarian turn.
These stories and so many more would be impossible without your support. This week we're asking for donations, but we know you already support Reason in so many ways, including with your holiday shopping (buy from our gift guide or use Amazon's charity link to generate tiny kickbacks for us when you shop), with your subscriptions, and simply by signing up for, consuming, and sharing our content. Reason is a 501(c)(3), by the by, which means a little bonus on your taxes as well when you donate.
Reason's aim is to produce high-quality journalism about the vital role that free minds and free markets play in making a better world. Thank you for helping us do that, in whatever way you can.
The post Donate Today To Kick Off <em>Reason</em>'s Annual Webathon appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Netflix is paying President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama millions of dollars to produce shows for them.
The latest Obama documentary series is The G Word. "G" for government.
As Netflix documentaries go, this one is remarkably stupid. It's big government propaganda.
Obama begins by claiming that he does his own income taxes, saying, "It's actually easy."
I think he's joking, but it's not clear.
"I'm amazing at them," Obama continues hours later. "You can be, too, if you use the helpful tools found at IRS.gov."
But that's just silly. It's so complex that millions of us pay to get help.
Obama's series is hosted by silly comedian Adam Conover. Conover, correctly, calls himself "an idiot."
He uses his time with the former president of the United States to make lame jokes and, at one point, to make sandwiches. He compliments Obama on how well he cuts the bread. It's not funny.
The series occasionally covers some serious issues—meat inspection, for example. But instead of honest reporting, actors do a skit suggesting that, without government, meat companies would sell us dead poisoned rats.
"Food regulation was unbelievably successful," concludes Conover.
But food is largely safe today mostly because slaughterhouses cleaned themselves up way beyond what government requires. Companies don't want bad reputations.
One company executive showed me how they voluntarily do extra things like treat beef carcasses "with rinses and a 185-degree steam vacuum." Also, "equipment is routinely taken completely apart to be swab-tested."
By contrast, for 90 years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspected meat with a crude process called "poke and sniff." Inspectors stuck spikes into carcasses and smelled them. They kept using the same spikes, so they sometimes spread disease. The government only stopped poke and sniff in the 1990s.
A few times, Obama's series admits that government agencies mess things up. Conover mocks the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), "not a name you normally hear after the words 'did a great job.'"
No, but he then claims FEMA fails because it's underfunded, saying, "How many lives could have been saved if FEMA had had the resources they needed?"
That's ridiculous. FEMA doesn't fail because it lacks resources. U.S. disaster relief funds have increased by billions. FEMA fails because it's a government bureaucracy, and bureaucracies do wasteful things, like bring bottles of water to hurricane victims but then leave them at an airport.
The private sector is more efficient.
The G Word sneers at what it calls "this philosophy that the free market should be trusted over the government." But Walmart donates supplies much more efficiently than FEMA. They employ sophisticated weather tracking that helps them determine what assets are needed where. They get things to people because they lose money if they don't.
Obama's series smears those of us who are skeptical of government handouts.
"In the wake of the civil rights movement," claims Conover, "some Americans began to resent the fact that the government was now providing assistance to black and brown citizens."
What? We didn't resent welfare because we're racists. We objected because it created a new permanent underclass.
Handouts, President Ronald Reagan explained correctly, "discourage work."
So Obama's documentary depicts Reagan as a vicious surgeon cutting valuable government agencies, throwing them into a bucket labeled "free market."
But government wasn't cut under Reagan. Federal spending went up during his terms. It always goes up. At one point, the excesses were so grotesque that President Bill Clinton said, "The era of big government is over."
But it wasn't. It only grows. Today it's bigger than ever.
That's fine, says Conover, because Washington rescued us during the COVID shutdowns with "stimulus checks, small business loans, and corporate tax breaks!"
They don't mention how much of that money was stolen or that their spending orgy brought 8 percent inflation.
For three hours, Obama and his sidekick say government should do more. Whatever the problem, their answer is always more government and more money.
Maybe someday a president will point out that government has no money of its own and that spending more than you have is a road to ruin.
COPYRIGHT 2022 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
The post Netflix Teams Up With the Obamas To Produce Big Government Propaganda appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>When Russia attacked Ukraine, "experts" said the country would fall within days.
It hasn't.
One reason is that the Russian military wasn't as effective as people thought.
Another is that Ukrainians surprised the world by courageously defending their country.
A third reason is that volunteers from everywhere stepped in to help.
People with combat experience joined Ukraine's Foreign Legion. Doctors, nurses, and others with medical experience are keeping the country's health care system going. Several thousand others do humanitarian work, like distributing food and medicine.
For my video this week, Stossel TV executive producer Maxim Lott went to Ukraine to record them at work.
He rode along with ambulance driver Didrik Gunnestad, a 27-year-old volunteer from Norway. Gunnestad delivered supplies, and then he drove sick people out of dangerous areas.
"It was learning by doing," he says. Ambulances were desperately needed. "Most things that happen here are done by volunteers, not government officials."
Tom Palmer, an American with the Atlas Network think tank, raised more than $1 million in aid for Ukraine. He flew it to Poland and then drove some of it into Ukraine himself. He worked with Ukrainian volunteers to find out where aid was most needed.
"It was just astonishing to see this network emerge," says Palmer. "It wasn't centrally directed….[Volunteers] solved a lot of micro problems that big hierarchies can't see."
The volunteers also reduce waste.
"There is a lot of loss [in big charities like the Red Cross]," says Gunnestad. "Not that someone is skimming off the top; it's just the cost of being a big organization."
Governments are even more bureaucratic.
Poland's government does want to help Ukraine, but its bureaucracy often makes it hard. When Gunnestad and Lott went to a depot where Gunnestad had previously picked up donated goods, they found that the bureaucracy had changed the rules. Now Gunnestad was supposed to write a letter to the Polish government to get supplies. Since they didn't have time to wait, they left empty-handed.
Even the Ukrainian government makes it needlessly hard for volunteers to deliver goods. They force most everyone to wait in long lines at the borders. When Lott and Gunnestad crossed this summer, there were still mile-long lines.
Ambulances, at least, are generally allowed to skip the line.
"But sometimes there's a guard who doesn't like it," says Gunnestad. "We have had patients almost dying because of guards like that."
As he drove past the long line of trucks, he sighed and said, "I feel so sorry for the drivers of the trucks. Some could be in line for days, or even a week!"
Many of those truckers are trying to bring in needed supplies, but "they were only allowing 400 Ukrainian trucks per day," says Palmer. "That's just nothing. Why couldn't they bring in more? If you need to inspect them, get more inspectors!"
The bureaucracy didn't.
"You have maybe seven checkpoints, but only two are open," complains Gunnestad. "They could at least open all seven."
Lott notes, "Volunteers can't do everything. They don't supply the military or provide fuel. But they are saving lives."
For example, Gunnestad's team picks up patients at overburdened hospitals and takes them to less busy facilities.
They also deliver supplies to neglected Ukrainian hospitals. Gunnestad says small hospitals often get nothing from the government or the Red Cross. "We have a chance to help places that's forgotten," he says.
You can help Gunnestad do this work by donating to his GoFundMe page. It's a way to help Ukrainians without taking the risks that Gunnestad does.
His ambulance has been hit with bullets. Fortunately, no volunteer has been hit.
"I always have been the person who runs into dangerous situations," he says. "I think this work is so meaningful that I'm willing to die for it."
COPYRIGHT 2022 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
The post Volunteers in Ukraine Are Stepping Up Where the Government Is Failing appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>So why, exactly, are you wonderful readers/listeners/viewers of Reason-generated product making this annual webathon the second-biggest and possibly even the biggest haul in our 14 years of conducting an online fundraising drive, already blasting through not one but TWO ambitious fundraising targets (later days, $420,000!)? Let's hear from you in your own words. But first, a reminder:
WON'T YOU PRETTY PLEASE WITH NONTARIFFED IMPORT SUGAR ON TOP DONATE TO REASON RIGHT THE HELL NOW? Thank you.
The webathon donation form, as more than a thousand of you know already, has a little "comment" box in which you can write your suggestions, zingers, and various bon mots. They make for marvelous reading.
More than a dozen of you credit Reason with helping keep you "sane" in these unhinged times; there's lots of oh don't bother with the swag, just keep on keeping on; and holy COW did about 7,000 percent more of you have nice words to say about The Reason Roundtable this year. Thanks, fellow kids!
We'll start here with a nice conversion story, and then move on to our five main categories of listener-generated comment, which are: You Get Us, You Really Do; Agree to Disagree; Nick Gillespie Appreciation Society; Spreading the Love; and Limericks. BUT FIRST!
For most of my adult life I felt politically abandoned. Neither the left or right's dogma appealed to me. And then around 2016 I found out about Reason magazine. It may have been a tweet from Katherine Mangu-Ward about private space exploration or something from Matt Welch about baseball or some rock band or school choice. I don't remember exactly how I came across Reason but when I did it was like a light was turned on and I could see that I wasn't alone in the political wilds. Thank you, Reason and Reason staffers, for all you do to carve out a sane space in an insane world.
No, thank YOU! Moving on:
1) You Get Us, You Really Do
I also donated through my donor advised fund but wanted lunch with KMW so badly that I donated here as well. Nick's somewhat random and nearly never appropriate comments give me great hope for whatever medical condition the two of us share. Yes, I do pay my wife for sex, mostly because she does NOT need the money and it makes her happy. In all seriousness, I find a great deal of value in what you guys do for me and the world.
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I love calm rational thought that can separate liking or disliking the outcome from discussing if the rules/process is correct. Thank you for what you do
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You're a shower of robot fucking drug pigs. That would be enough to warrant a few quid in itself but you're also one of the few places left that supports wholehearted debate.
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BOOG POWELL
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Keep up the good work Round Table! Your humor and insights are very engaging. Though at a political level being libertarian can be discouraging, listening to the podcast keeps me optimistic and inspired about the beauty of human expression and possibility, thanks!
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Sexbots for everyone.
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Poor in 2021 but I love you guys, especially the roundtable assholes, oops I meant hosts who I adore more than anything. More next year I promise so just hang in there. Please no shout-outs! I'm a govt. contractor for god's sake :). I should have more money??? I'm livin off the largess. Must question life choices…
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Listen to the Reason Roundtable weekly to get a different perspective on world events and ideas. Came for the conversation, stay for the bad puns and jokes.
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Please get Matt Welch a pronunciation [ pruh-nuhn-see-ey-shuhn ] guide.
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My absolute favorite place to stay up to date on the internet. You represent what is possible in reporting and opinion, reason, a nice breadth of viewpoints and most of all, zero sensationalism!
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Thank you for not just being a blast for the like-minded, but also for the approachable, fun, informative, diverse content that can connect to folks of all stripes. Here's to fun, occasionally jostling content and conversations being the gateway drug to a more-free, dynamic world where we are all free to pursue the freak-flags, cocktails, rocketships, slash-fiction, doses, and sports of our choosing.
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Thanks. Hope this helps with Nick's shroom stash, Katherine's brownie bakes, or anything else that passes as "coffee". You guys are the best.
2) Agree to Disagree (this one's Katherine's favorite)
I primarily listen to the Roundtable, and you guys drive me bananas with how wrong you are about nearly everything, from what government can do for us to whatever the fuck the MCU is. BUT….I value the balance the Roundtable gives me in comparison to the rest of my media bubble. And, occasionally KMW says the smartest thing I've heard in months. Keep it up!
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Thanks for keeping me sharp, both in my agreement and my disagreements with you. Kudos generally on the Kindle edition of the mag.
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I just heard about this on the Reason Roundtable and wanted to support what you are doing at reason.com. While I don't agree with everything, I really appreciate the perspectives and the disagreements even within the Roundtable editors. Keep up the great work!
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I don't agree with everything you say, but I love that you are not afraid to say it.
3) Nick Gillespie Appreciation Society
love the reason roundtable every week; love nick's reason interviews—well, most of nick's interviews
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Nick is the only one who likes my tweets. Keep on fighting!!
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I know this isn't enough of a donation to make personal requests, but could someone, anyone, grab Nick "Dr. Grump" Gillespie and reenact that scene in Good Will Hunting, where they keep telling him it's not his fault until he breaks down in tears?
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I don't need any schwag. Save the $$ and just keep up the good work…and by "good work" busting Gillespie's balls on The Reason Roundtable is at the top of the list.
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I enjoy the Reason Roundtable podcast. I don't have $1000 to give, but I'd still like to have lunch with Nick someday.
4) Spreading the Love
Gillespie, Soave, Welch, and KMW are national treasures, albeit for different reasons. Keep getting placed in the podcasts, interviews, and contributor slots that matter. Fifth Columnists Kmele and Moyn could write a column every fifth day…
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Keep up your great work. I think that Eric Boehm is the best journalist in America. You are extremely lucky to have him on board.
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I love listening to the Reason Roundtable! I also greatly appreciate that Reason is focusing on the fall of the Soviet Union; my mother and her family fled Latvia in late 1944 (came to US in 1949) but I have other family members still over there. I love all of the great articles on immigration and the Baltic States that Fiona Harrigan is writing for Reason. And I'm curious whether Peter Suderman has ever tried Riga Black Balsam in any of his cocktails.
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I appreciate all the great reporting guys do. Reason is probably my biggest source for news and if I could afford to donate more I would. Keep up the great work!
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Upon the event of my death I wish to donate my body to Katherine Mangu-Ward.
5) Limericks
I love your work, especially the Reason Roundtable podcast — it's a little burst of sanity I look forward to each week. Thanks for all you do! Also, because Matt asked, here's one of my favourite limericks:
There was an old man
from Peru, whose lim'ricks all
looked like haiku. He
said with a laugh, "I
cuts 'em in half — the pay is
much better for two."
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There once were two men, now at large,
But now, thankfully Katherine's in charge,
But a 4th man, a nerd,
Who likes cocktails, I've heard,
Is loud as a Florida barge.
(I'm sorry, but clean limericks are hard.)
Look, some of these webathon donors may be wrong (especially about poetry), but all of 'em? C'mon, man! Join the bad-pronunciation parade, and help us do more and better libertarian journalism and commentary.
WON'T YOU DONATE TO REASON TODAY?
The post Read Why <i>Reason</i> Consumers Have Donated to Our Almost-Over Webathon! appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>(UPDATE 22 HOURS LATER: Whoops! You did it again! A second matching grant now matched. Thanks to everyone who helped double the impact of the generous $50,000 challenge donation we announced yesterday afternoon. Now we are so very close to our already-stretched goal of $420,000! Help us toke it over the line!)
You people are amazing. At 8 a.m. EST Thursday morning, I cajoled you into meeting a matching grant from an anonymous donor of $100,000 to our annual fundraising webathon, in which we rattle the tin to support and improve our journalism.
It took you just 26 hours to meet the match.
What does this mean? It means that even before the $100,000 grant was clocked, we had exceeded in both number of donors and total donations each of our first six webathons. It also means that our initial goal of $300,000 for the entire week has been rendered too modest, so we're kicking it up to…$420,000! (Natch.)
But here's the craziest development yet. Another generous anonymous soul (well, three, but they've combined into one entity for the sake of this gesture) was inspired by this exercise to put forward yet another matching grant of $50,000! What is even going on anymore?
I'll tell you what's going on: You people are absolutely enabling and inspiring us to produce more and better libertarian content. And now, you have a primo opportunity to double your money again!
Katherine Mangu-Ward explained the giving levels and swag; Nick Gillespie introduced our first-ever non-fungible token (NFT) auction (currently at $3,258 and counting!), I hyped our media-debunking work, we + Peter Suderman subjected ourselves to your questions (and each other) on video; and Katherine came back to highlight the great work of individual staffers. The reasons for the Reason-season are all there.
But now it's time to tickle the number centers of your brains. You match that latest $50,000 grant, and we'll likely blaze past $420,000, stagger toward the half-million mark, and maybe even compete for the title of Greatest webathon Ever. Let's make this happen, people!
DONATE TO REASON JUST AS SOON AS YOU CAN, BUT PREFERABLY RIGHT THE HELL NOW!
The post That Was Fast! We Met Our Second $50,000 Match! appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>BREAKING: We quickly met our last match and then—out of the blue—received a super generous offer from a pair of longtime donors: A $100,000 match. We are blown away, and super-appreciative. To make this match count and totally destroy our stretch goal, now is the moment for more readers, listeners, and viewers to chip in at the home stretch. More than 1,000 of you have already, and we are grateful. If you've been hesitating, now's your time to pull the trigger, even if it's just a few bucks or a smidge of a bitcoin. Thank you to the donors offering this challenge grant, and to those of you who are going to help us meet it.
We've got just two days left in our annual Webathon, the time when we ask Reason readers, viewers, and listeners to support our writing, videos, and podcasts with tax-deductible donations. Go here to see the swag associated with various giving levels.
Due to the great response, we upped our original target of $200,000 to $300,000; now we're closing in on that total. To help make sure we reach it, a generous donor has agreed to match the next $25,000 in gifts, so your donation will be worth twice as much for the next while. So please don't delay: Make your contribution right now.
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]]>Life-saving plasma therapies are essential for many patients, but every year we flirt with a shortage. Plasma collected in the United States is the source material for more than 70 percent of the world's supply; humanity is nearly always one market disruption away from global catastrophe.
American dominance in this realm is explained by one simple fact: In the United States, it's legal to pay people for their plasma. Millions of Americans regularly give plasma in exchange for $30–$50 per donation. The average American donor gives 21.4 times per year. If you add plasma obtained from Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic—the other places where compensation is offered—paid plasma accounts for a staggering 89 percent of all the plasma used to make plasma therapies for the whole world.
Most foreign countries refuse to pay for plasma because of outmoded guidance from the World Health Organization. Its decades-old policy was initially motivated by the concern that payment would attract people from lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder who are more likely to be carriers of transmissible infections. Those concerns no longer apply: There have been significant improvements in testing technology since the 1970s, and modern manufacturers now have the ability to use virus removal and inactivation techniques, rendering samples safer than ever. Yet the organization's guidance has not changed.
Some theorize that we don't have more volunteer plasma donors because we just haven't asked in the right way. But millions have been spent on TV, radio, and newspaper advertisements encouraging unpaid donation. Others say paid plasma is exploitative, but they don't explain how prohibiting compensation would help people who currently feel the need to sell their plasma. Countries that have made the switch to paid donation have not seen altruism pushed out. The Czech Republic legalized compensation for plasma donations in 2008. Within three years, total donations increased sevenfold, making the country self-sufficient in plasma therapies.
Due to the coronavirus, plasma donations have fallen 15–20 percent across the United States. Between the depressed supply of plasma and the possibility that demand will rise as new COVID-19 treatments that rely on plasma are developed, the world could well be heading for a devastating shortfall. The problem could be quickly and cheaply remedied if it weren't for irresponsible guidance from global health bodies and an unfounded bias against paid donation.
The post More Countries Should Pay Plasma Donors appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>U.S. tech companies have been donating a massive number of N95 particulate-filtering face masks to hospitals and health care workers. Holding up the old adage about no good deed going unpunished, some Americans have been lashing out at these companies.
Some of this has come in the form of hostility toward tech giants that's better suited for government officials here. And, sure, front-line workers in this pandemic shouldn't have to "rely on Silicon Valley for face masks." But the fact that Silicon Valley companies are stepping up to provide supplies we lack because of government mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak response, excessive regulations surrounding who can manufacture medical supplies, and generally poor pandemic prep from federal authorities is hardly a knock against these technology companies.
Some of the hostility has come from folks accusing tech companies of having hoarded N95 masks previously, or implying that there's something untoward about them having all these masks "just laying around."
Again, this ire is misplaced. Mask donations are coming from the likes of Facebook, Apple, Salesforce, Tesla, Flexport, Intel, and IBM, all headquartered or with operations in the Bay Area. That's an area wracked with wildfires, especially these days.
Last year, California amended health regulations to require employers in certain wildfire risk areas to provide voluntary N95 respirator masks for at-risk employees. The regulation, from California's Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board, took effect in August 2019 and is set to sunset after one year.
The types of masks mandated in California are not surgical N95 masks but those that block particles of dust, smoke, and construction byproducts. Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration relaxed its rules to say that the non-surgical N95 masks were allowed to be used by health care workers and medical facilities.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook's reserve of masks had been "bought in case the wildfires continued." (He also said the company is trying to source "a lot more to donate.")
Our teams at Apple have been working to help source supplies for healthcare providers fighting COVID-19. We're donating millions of masks for health professionals in the US and Europe. To every one of the heroes on the front lines, we thank you.
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) March 21, 2020
Thank you to our Ohana for delivering our first 9000 masks to UCSF. We are working hard across all of our resources & relationships to deliver an additional 5 million masks this week plus additional critical PPE. All of us need to focus on getting PPE to our local hospitals. pic.twitter.com/y7mgL0KhrT
— Marc Benioff (@Benioff) March 23, 2020
Do these donations come even remotely near to solving all our mask problems? No. But they still may save a lot of lives and prevent even more infections.
We're going to need private businesses big and small, state and federal authorities, charitable groups, and countless individuals to work together to get through this. Now isn't the time for the kind of reactionary, anti-markets, anti-Big Tech bias that's still too frequently coming from both the political left and right in the wake of COVID-19.
A federal stimulus package was hashed out in Congress yesterday, calling for $2 trillion in direct aid spending. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) said the package contained "unemployment compensation on steroids."
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the total price of the economic stimulus plan will be about $6 trillion, once you factor in $4 trillion in Federal Reserve loans–making it the largest economic stimulus plan approved in U.S. history.
"Ladies and gentleman, we are done," White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland said right before 1am after leaving Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office following negotiations that have spanned around the clock since last Friday. "We have a deal."
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 25, 2020
Stay tuned for more Reason commentary on the package later today. For now, here are some thoughts from Michigan* Independent Rep. Justin Amash:
This bipartisan deal is a raw deal for the people. It does far too little for those who need the most help, while providing hundreds of billions in corporate welfare, massively growing government, inhibiting economic adaptation, and widening the gap between the rich and the poor.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) March 25, 2020
And check out Billy Binion's Tuesday interview with Amash about the idea of cutting direct checks to all Americans.
Prisons and jails are releasing people incarcerated for nonviolent crimes as facilities face COVID-19 outbreaks. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to release 300 people from Rikers Island and at least 1,700 jail inmates have already been released in Los Angeles County.
"Thousands of elderly federal inmates are incarcerated in prisons that could become hothouses for COVID-19, and advocates and members of Congress say the Trump administration needs to take rapid action to get them out of harm's way," Reason's C.J. Ciaramella noted yesterday. "On Tuesday criminal justice groups and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle—not to mention inmates themselves—urged the Trump administration to use existing compassionate release policies, as well as mass clemency or executive orders, to free at-risk federal inmates."
Dozens of people, both workers& the incarcerated, have tested positive for COVID-19 on Rikers.
Many are forcibly cramped into close quarters. They do not have reliable access to soap or sanitizer. This is a humanitarian crisis.
Decarceral action must become an urgent priority. https://t.co/IDbNN3etew
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 25, 2020
Related: "Why coronavirus in jails should concern us all."
Gangs in the Rio de Janeiro favelas have enforced a lockdown from 8pm tonight. The statement reads: "If the government won't do the right thing, organised crime will" pic.twitter.com/dK0wtAR3KA
— Andrew Cesare (@AndrewCesare) March 23, 2020
Poll: 23% of American adults say the novel coronavirus was deliberately developed in a lab. 6% say it was a lab accident. 1% say the whole thing is made up. https://t.co/NvUgu0z7Ud
— Jesse Walker (@notjessewalker) March 25, 2020
Trump's government is debating whether to defer import tariffs for 3 months, sources say https://t.co/lfu4tmzRKn
— Bloomberg (@business) March 24, 2020
CORRECTION: Amash represents Michigan, not Vermont.
The post Tech Companies Weren't Hoarding Masks, They Were Protecting Employees From Wildfire Smoke appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>A new boycott has begun and this time it's targeting beloved franchise In-N-Out Burgers.
A public filing shows a $25,000 donation from the California-based chain to the California Republican Party. Following revelations of the donation, Eric Bauman, Chair of the California Democratic Party, asked "Et tu In-N-Out?" before calling on others to boycott.
Et tu In-N-Out? Tens of thousands of dollars donated to the California Republican Party… it's time to #BoycottInNOut—let Trump and his cronies support these creeps… perhaps animal style!https://t.co/9zkdFaG5CJ
— EricBauman (@EricBauman) August 30, 2018
The hashtag, #BoycottInNOut, was quickly picked up by disgruntled fans who were disappointed at the donation. Others observed that the burger chain's donation is unsurprising—the firm is based in Irvine, California, which is part of the heavily Republican Orange County. One Twitter user, who said they would not join the boycott, wrote, "Of course they like the CA GOP, they proselytize on all their food with hidden [Bible verses]." (In-N-Out places discreet Bible verses on its packaging.)
The burger chain has also made donations across the aisle. Fortune found that campaign finance filings show a 2017 donation of $30,000 and a 2018 donation of $50,000 to Californians for Jobs and a Strong Economy, a political action committee that provides support for business-friendly Democrats.
Earlier in the month, Joseph Curtatone, the Democratic mayor of Somerville, Massachusetts, promised to never drink Sam Adams beer again after founder Jim Koch thanked President Donald Trump for tax reform. Curtatone accused Koch of profiting off "Trump's white nationalist agenda." Koch's thanks came with an explanation for how lower taxes poised American beers for better international competition.
UPDATE: Reason was provided with the following statement from Executive Vice President Arnie Wensinger:
In 2018, In-N-Out Burger has made equal contributions to both Democratic and Republican Political Action Committees in the State of California. For years, In-N-Out Burger has supported lawmakers who, regardless of political affiliation, promote policies that strengthen California and allow us to continue operating with the values of providing strong pay and great benefits for our Associates.
It is actually far more important to In-N-Out and our Foundations to support our communities by contributing millions of dollars to hundreds of organizations in California to prevent child abuse, human trafficking and substance addiction.
We have been fortunate to do business in this great state for almost 70 years. While it is unfortunate that our contributions to support both political parties in California has caused concern with some groups, we believe that bipartisan support is a fair and consistent approach that best serves the interests of our company and all of our Customers.
The post California Democrats Call for In-N-Out Boycott appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>A new report from the Federal Election Commission reveals that Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) used money raised by a political action committee he created, New PAC, to pay for nearly $40,000 in questionable travel, lodging, dining, and entertainment expenses since 2017. According to the FEC, New PAC listed the expenditures as fundraising costs.
A Boston Celtics fan since high school, Nunes spent nearly $15,000 on tickets to see home games at TD Garden last year: $7,300 in February 2017, $5,700 in April 2017, and $1,588 in May 2017. In addition to the tickets, New PAC spent $3,594 on hotel stays during games in May 2017.
Last month, McClatchy reports, Nunes spent about $5,000 at six California wineries outside his district, about $5,000 on Gold Coast Limousine service during his winery trips, and $4,409 at a beach hotel located near the wineries. In March 2018, Nunes spent $7,229 at seven restaurants and hotels in Las Vegas. He has spent a total of $42,741 on "catering, site rentals, hotels and meals" in Las Vegas since 2013.
The expenditures on basketball games, wineries, Las Vegas trips, and other travel were all described as related to fundraising. The House Ethics Committee prohibits "personal use" of PAC money, but the rule is rarely enforced. The FEC says money that public officials raise for their own campaigns cannot be used for personal expenses, but that rule does not apply to leadership PACs like Nunes', which are supposed to support other people's campaigns. "For many officeholders," the Campaign Legal Center notes, "leadership PACs have become little more than slush funds, used to subsidize an officeholder's luxury lifestyle."
In a statement to The Hill, the congressman's office called the McClatchy report "yet another baseless attack" by the news service, saying "it insinuates wrongdoing while actually showing that Rep. Nunes has broken no rules and properly reported all expenses for his fundraising events, much of whose income he gives to help elect other Republicans."
Nunes separately raised $7 million for his 2018 re-election bid, a significant jump from previous election cycles, when he usually collected $1 million to $2.5 million. McClatchy notes that "Nunes' fame has grown enormously due to his position as House Intelligence Committee chairman, his friendly relationship with President Donald Trump and his controversial views about Department of Justice investigations."
The post Rep. Devin Nunes Spent <em>How Much</em> on Celtics Tickets? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Several Canadian provinces are currently considering proposals to ban payments for blood plasma. Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta have already adopted such bans.
It's a bad idea. Canadian patients need more plasma, and such bans will only get in the way.
Blood plasma is a pale yellow fluid of whole blood that includes water and its medically valuable dissolved constituents, including albumin, clotting factors, and immune globulins. A company called Canadian Plasma Resources wants to open commercial plasma centers, where it would pay sellers between $25 and $50 per session. Obtaining plasma takes considerably longer than regular blood donations—between an hour and 90 minutes more—and paying for it makes people more likely to offer it. (It is not illegal in the U.S. to pay for whole blood, but it must be labeled as such and hospitals generally choose not to use products that are labeled from a paid donor for liability reasons. Let us set aside why that is the case for another time.)
In an op-ed in The Toronto Star, Canadian Doctors for Medicare chief Danyaal Raza claims that "Paying Canadians for plasma donations carries too many risks and should be stopped." Similarly, the nonprofit Canadian Blood Services (CBS), which is in charge of obtaining and distributing fresh blood donations, is against commercial plasma collection.
Yet CBS issued a statement two years ago that acknowledged two important facts:
Drugs made from plasma donated by paid donors are just as safe as those made from plasma from volunteer donors.
Access to the commercial paid plasma market is essential in ensuring enough supply so that Canadian patients continue to receive the lifesaving therapies they need.
CBS also noted that unpaid Canadian plasma donations are not enough to supply Canadian patients with vital plasma protein products such as immune globulins. "We only collect enough plasma to meet about 25 per cent of the demand for immune globulins," the group notes. "The remaining plasma needed to make these drugs comes from paid donors in the United States. It is safe and is acceptable to patient groups who use these products and recognize this practice ensures security of supply."
Given this shortage, why are some Canadian ethicists, physicians, and legislators opposed to paying for plasma from sellers? Many of them argue that the folks who sell plasma are more likely to be poor and to harbor diseases that could taint plasma supplies. Earlier this month a group of ethicists and economists organized by the Georgetown philosopher Peter Jaworski countered these arguments in an open letter that concluded these concerns are unwarranted.
The Jaworski letter begins by pointing out that "Canada is almost entirely dependent on the United States for its supply of plasma-derived medicinal products, like immune globulin, albumin, and clotting factor." (More than 90 percent of the world's plasma comes from the U.S.)
"The fact that we're buying plasma products from south of the border rather undermines our rationale for not paying donors here, because it suggests we don't actually believe that payment is unsafe, commodifying, or exploitative, and shows just how badly these products are needed," says Vida Panitch, an ethicist at Carleton University and a signatory to the letter.
Other opponents of plasma sales argue that they exploit low-income sellers. The open letter notes that plasmapheresis—the process in which the liquid part of the blood is separated from the blood cells—is non-invasive, and that the level of compensation is not so high as to unduly induce someone to sell. They further observe that there is no evidence that compensation to sellers of blood plasma donations has "promoted the view that donors or their blood plasma are regarded as mere commodities."
The group also rebuts the worry that paying people for plasma will necessarily reduce the incentives for altruistic donations. Over 600 paid plasma collection centers operate in the U.S., yet the country has an approximately 50 percent higher rate of voluntary, unpaid blood donations than Canada does.
Finally, the signatories argue that banning compensation for plasma is itself unethical because it is likely to harm patients by reducing the supply of vital medicines. They correctly conclude that "none of the moral objections to the compensatory model are persuasive." If anything, they think there's a "strong moral presumption" against any law that would reduce the supply of plasma-derived medical products.
The post Selling Blood Plasma Is Not Unethical appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The Office of Management and Budget has withdrawn a proposed rule banning compensation for hematopoietic stem cells. In other words, you can get paid when someone harvests stem cells from your bone marrow.
Bone marrow transplantation is used to treat a variety of ailments, including aplastic anemia, sickle cell anemia, bone marrow damage during chemotherapy, and blood cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. In 1984, Congress passed the National Organ and Transplant Act, which outlawed compensation to the donors of solid organs like kidneys and livers. Oddly, the act also defined renewable bone marrow as a solid organ.
Originally, hematopoietic stem cells were obtained from bone marrow obtained by inserting a needle into donors' hip bones. Researchers later developed a technique in which donors are treated with substance that overstimulates the production of hematopoietic stem cells, which then circulate in their bloodstreams. In a process similar to blood donation, the hematopoietic stem cells are then filtered from the donors' blood. The red blood cells and plasma are returned to the donors.
More Marrow Donors, a California-based nonprofit, wanted to set up a system to encourage hematopoietic stem cell donations with $3,000 awards, in the form of scholarships, housing allowances, or gifts to charity. The Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, brought suit on their behalf, and in 2012 a federal appeals court sensibly ruled that the law's ban on compensation for solid organ donations did not apply to stem cells obtained from donors' bloodstreams. The Obama administration reacted by proposing a regulation defining stem cells obtained from blood as the equivalent of a solid organ.
Now the new administration has withdrawn the proposal.
"Banning compensation for donors would have eliminated the best incentive we have—money—for persuading strangers to work for each other," Jeff Rowes, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, says in a press release. "Predictably, the ban on compensation for blood stem cell donors created chronic shortages and waiting lists. During the past four years, thousands of Americans needlessly died because compensation for bone marrow donors was unavailable."
The system of uncompensated donation is falling far short of meeting patient needs. As the Institute for Justice notes:
At any given time, more than 11,000 Americans are actively searching for a bone marrow donor. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, Caucasian potential donors are available and willing to donate about 51 percent of the time; Hispanic and Asian about 29 percent; and African-American about 23 percent. Caucasian patients can find a matching, available and willing donor about 75 percent of the time; Hispanic about 37 percent; Asian-American about 35 percent; and African-American patients only about 19 percent of the time. This demonstrates the huge gap between the need for compatible donors and the supply.
This is even more true in the case of solid organs from live and brain-dead donors. Right now there are more than 116,000 Americans waiting for a life-saving transplant organ. My colleagues and I at Reason have been arguing for decades in favor of compensating live donors for kidneys and pieces of their livers and the next-of-kin of brain-dead donors for other solid organs. If researchers and entrepreneurs succeed in boosting bone marrow donations by implementing various compensation schemes, perhaps that will prompt Congress to repeal its ill-conceived ban on compensation for organs donated for transplant.
The post Trump Administration Withdraws Proposed Obama Ban on Compensation for Bone Marrow appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>This is what "wrong within normal parameters" looks like in Washington, D.C. The Associated Press reports today that more than half of the non-government folks who met with Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state gave donations to the Clinton Foundation.
The AP counts 85 out 154 people who either had meetings or phone conversations with Clinton as either donating themselves or through companies and groups. And this isn't chump change either. The total to the foundation from these people: $156 million. Here's what the AP found:
Donors who were granted time with Clinton included an internationally known economist who asked for her help as the Bangladesh government pressured him to resign from a nonprofit bank he ran; a Wall Street executive who sought Clinton's help with a visa problem and Estee Lauder executives who were listed as meeting with Clinton while her department worked with the firm's corporate charity to counter gender-based violence in South Africa.
The meetings between the Democratic presidential nominee and foundation donors do not appear to violate legal agreements Clinton and former president Bill Clinton signed before she joined the State Department in 2009. But the frequency of the overlaps shows the intermingling of access and donations, and fuels perceptions that giving the foundation money was a price of admission for face time with Clinton. Her calendars and emails released as recently as this week describe scores of contacts she and her top aides had with foundation donors.
The latest round of released emails prompted accusations of "pay to play" at the State Department. The response has been that providing "access" is not the same as actually providing "favors." The problem with such an argument is that "access" is in itself a favor. It's not like any of us proletarians could have gotten a meeting with Clinton.
Do keep in mind that the amount of money Paul Manafort, formerly of Donald Trump's campaign, is accused of funneling to U.S. lobbyists on behalf of interests in Ukraine and Russia is a pittance compared to the amount of money directed toward the foundation.
This shouldn't be taken a defense of Manafort's behavior or any of the lobbying went on back then. But rather it's a reminder of how this looks like outside the beltway. When the "normal parameters" look as bad as this, no wonder there's a significant number of Americans willing to ignore Trump's own form of awful financial behavior. And it helps explain why Clinton had such a hard time shaking off the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The post The Clinton Foundation Was Clearly an Avenue of Access to Hillary appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Nowadays when a pol says that she or he is in favor of this or that "common sense" regulation or law, they are really trying to lull voters into accepting more controls over their lives and wallets. But every once in a while, a legislator actually does make a common sense proposal. One such is the Organ Donor Clarification Act introduced by Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Penn.).
At the behest of brilliant solons like then-Congressman Al Gore (D-Tenn.), Congress passed the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA) of 1984 which forbids people from rewarding organ donors or their families with any filthy lucre. Killing off markets in organs predictably resulted in a shortage. There are now 121,000 Americans waiting for a transplantable organ. As the press release from Cartwright's office notes, eliminating the kidney waiting list would save taxpayers well in excess of $5.5 billion per year in medical costs and billions of dollars more in savings to other social programs.
Rep. Cartwright wants to crack open the door and allow researchers to consider providing some kind of compensation to donors and their families. The Organ Donor Clarification Act would "allow government-run pilot programs to test the effect of providing non cash incentives to promote organ donation. These pilot programs would have to pass ethical board scrutiny, be approved by HHS, distribute organs through the current merit based system, and last no longer than five years."
Non-cash, but still it's a move in the right direction.
The legislation has been endorsed by Americans for Tax Reform, American Foundation for Donation and Transplantation, American Medical Association, Fair Allocations in Research Foundation, Transplant Recipients International Organization, and WaitList Zero.
For more background see my articles, "The Case for Selling Human Organs," and "Fresh Kidneys for Sale."
The post Common Sense Organ Donation Reform Proposed appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>A group of 60 wealthy donors and activists have signed onto a new letter urging Congress to create a system of public financing that would curtail their own influence in elections, according to a copy of the letter being sent to the Hill on Friday.
Signatories to the letter include major Democratic bundler Naomi Aberly, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen, tech mogul David DesJardins, businessman Arnold Hiatt and Jonathan Soros, among others.
The post Wealthy Democrats Call for Public Campaign Financing appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>A Kansas court ruled on Wednesday that a sperm donor must pay child support for his offspring, because he and the mother did not conduct their transaction through a state-approved channel.
In 2009, Jennifer Schreiner and her then-partner, Angela Bauer, wanted to have child but didn't want to deal with the prohibitive costs of having a doctor manage the artificial insemination. They posted an advertisement on Craigslist looking for a man to donate his sperm. William Marotta rose to the occasion.
Marotta had no intention of fathering the child. He signed a contract with the couple to relieve himself of any parental responsibilities. He handed over a plastic cup of sperm, and Schriener and Bauer handled the insemination process from there.
Schriener gave birth to a girl, and eventually applied for her daughter to receive health insurance from the state. In an exchange that Bauer described as "threatening," state officials demanded to know the identity of the donor before allowing the child to receive any benefits. The state wouldn't accept child support from Bauer, since she is not a legal guardian.
The Kansas Department for Children and Families (DCP) contacted Marotta, insisting that he be legally declared the girl's father, so he could pay back $6,000 in child support and then make all future payments. The DCP and Marotta went to court in 2012.
Solidarity from Shriener and Bauer and proof of their contract with Marotta wasn't enough for the Shawnee County District Court. Judge Mary Mattiva ruled that the donor would have to bear the financial burden of his biological daughter, because he gave his sperm directly to the couple instead of a properly licensed doctor. She explains:
In this case, quite simply, the parties failed to conform to the statutory requirements of the Kansas Parentage Act in not enlisting a licensed physician at some point in the artificial insemination process, and the parties' self-designation of (Marotta) as a sperm donor is insufficient to relieve (Marotta) of parental rights and responsibilities.
"The Marotta decision 'appears' to be a case of first impression in Kansas, the judge said. That means a specific issue in the ruling hasn't been dealt with before in that court, and there isn't binding authority on the matter," explains the Capital-Journal.
Marotta's lawyer was critical of not only the outcome, but of the DCP's behavior. "The cost to the state to bring this case far outweighs any benefit the state would get," he told CNN.
Marotta announced today that he plans to appeal the decision.
The post Judge Orders Sperm Donor To Pay Child Support appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Langone is involved with Dolan in a $180 million restoration project of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, but informed the cardinal that one potential "seven-figure" donor was unhappy with the pontiff's criticism of free markets—comments which have already angered conservative pundits and been called "Marxist" by Rush Limbaugh.
"I've told the cardinal, 'Your Eminence, this is one more hurdle I hope we don't have to deal with,'" Langone said to CNBC. "'You want to be careful about generalities. Rich people in one country don't act the same as rich people in another country.'"
The post Pope's Comments on Free Markets May Upset Some Donors appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Simmons, who was ranked 40th on Forbes' list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, gave hundreds of millions of dollars to diverse causes — from conservative political campaigns to Planned Parenthood.
The soft-spoken businessman's circle included political leaders and celebrities. He was friends with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, U2 singer Bono and Oprah Winfrey.
The post Billionaire Dallas Philanthropist, Donor Dies appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Now the group may have to answer embarrassing questions about its own finances.
A Watchdog.org review of financial documents reveals the Madison-based CMD, which bills itself as a journalism organization, received $520,000 in 2011 from the Schwab Charitable Fund. That's 60 percent of the $864,740 CMD received that year.
CMD lists no donors on its tax returns, but its website identifies numerous financial backers without any financial data. Several are highlighted in bold and labeled "current donors." But one important name is missing: Schwab.
The post Media Watchdog Attacking 'Dark Money' Unsurprisingly Also Receives 'Dark Money' appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The decision, heralded by First Amendment defenders, reflects a major setback for a campaign launched in 2011 to counter the influx of corporate political spending in recent election cycles.
"There's no accountability for political spending for the folks that actually own the companies — the shareholders," said Lisa Gilbert, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch division. "This is sort of a slap in the face to investors that have been demanding this.
The SEC announced it was considering imposing the regulations late last year, when it included the measure on its 2013 regulatory agenda. The action came in response to a petition submitted by a group of law professors contending that shareholders have a right to know how companies involve themselves in politics.
The post SEC Drops Plans for Corporate Donation Disclosure Regulations appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The Federal Election Commission on Thursday passed on a request by the Conservative Action Fund to use the digital currency. It had asked the FEC whether it could accept Bitcoins, how it could spend them and how donors must report those contributions.
Bitcoin is a cybercurrency that is relatively anonymous and is created and exchanged independently of any government or bank. Some retailers accept it, and the currency can be converted into cash after being deposited into virtual wallets.
The post FEC Won't Allow Bitcoins for Donations appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>
Desert Bus was never intended to be anything more than a joke. It was an inconsequential side-game that was part of Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors, a video game made in 1995 for several different consoles, but never released after the developer went out of business.
In Desert Bus, players drive a bus at a maximum speed of 45 miles per hour from Tucson, Ariz., to Las Vegas in actual, real time down a straight, featureless highway. That's it. That's the game. The trip takes eight hours. The game cannot be paused and the bus's alignment is just a touch off, so the player must sit there and keep the bus straight or it will run off the road.
In a 2006 interview, Penn Jillette explained that the purpose of the game was to respond to critics of video game violence (Janet Reno in particular) who perpetuated the scientifically unsubstantiated moral panic that violent games create violent teens who cause violence in the real world. Desert Bus was boring and awful on purpose. Nobody was supposed to enjoy playing it.
But a year after Jillette's explanation of the game, a video game comedy group called LoadingReadyRun got their hands on Desert Bus and came up with an idea—why not use the horribleness of the game to raise money for charity? In 2007 they began Desert Bus for Hope. Participants drove the bus back and forth from Tucson to Las Vegas for donations. The more donations they received, the longer they'd drive the bus.
For the first year, they reported $22,805 in donations. Their haul has increased every year since then. Last year they took in nearly $450,000. The donations go to Child's Play, a charity within the video game industry devoted to raising money and donating toys and games to sick kids in children's hospitals. Founded in 2003 by the creators of the famous online video-gamed-themed comic strip Penny Arcade, Child's Play now raises millions each year.
The Desert Bus fired up its engine again this past weekend. As of this morning they've raised more than $173,000.
Desert Bus for Charity and Child's Play aren't the only folks using video games to raise money for philanthropic purposes. At the end of October, Twitch, an online service that hosts gamers who livestream their play so people on the Internet can watch, declared that its community had raised more than $8 million for various charities. Twitch launched all of two years ago.
The glory days of the televised Jerry Lewis Telethon may be over (and the Muscular Dystrophy Association appears to be raising money just fine even with the reduction in televised programming), but cultural shifts bring around new philanthropic possibilities. Gen Xers and Millennials may not feel particularly attached to lounge crooners or prone to using their phones to actually call an 800 number to pledge a donation, but replace Dean Martin and friendly operators with Link from The Legend of Zelda and Internet crowdfunding tools and watch charity 2.0 (or whatever appropriate next-gen buzzwords apply) happen.
There's even a video game version of those familiar walkathons where folks get their neighbors to sponsor them a few bucks for charity in exchange for them traveling a few miles with their fellows on a given day (think of the various AIDS walks and the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life). On Nov. 2, gamers were invited to hold their own 25-hour gaming marathons to raise money for Children's Miracle Network hospitals. Organized through a program called Extra Life, many of these gamers streamed their activities through Twitch. Extra Life has reported raising $3.8 million so far in 2013.
Watching somebody else play games may not be entirely entertaining (especially Desert Bus), but there are often side auctions and prizes as well, so donors aren't just walking away empty-handed. There's even a bit of an education for the more intense or hard-core gamers.
Speed Demos Archive is made up of a group of players who like to beat video games as quickly as possible. They work at it, too, like craftsmen, playing their games over and over again, fighting to shave off valuable minutes and seconds here and there to set a new speed record. They started running charity marathons in 2011. Their two marathons in 2013 raised more than $400,000 for the Prevent Cancer Foundation and $250,000 for Doctors Without Borders. Watching their live stream is a great way to discover that the Nintendo game that tormented you as a child with its ridiculous difficulty curve can actually be beaten in just 20 minutes.
The MDA's telethon may have tossed aside Jerry Lewis and may no longer dominate the airwaves on Labor Day the way it used to, but charity continues to follow culture's recreational interests. Video game philanthropy is particularly worth noting by those who worry that today's young are so used to living in a world managed by a big government bureaucracy that handles everything. The bungled Affordable Care Act launch may have educated some about the dangers of expecting the government to manage our health programs, but millions of younger adults out there already know that there are other ways to provide for the needs of the sickest among us.
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]]>The folks at Ozymandias Media are less than $15,000 short of their $100,000 donation goal to looking for donors fast to help produce Puppycide, a documentary about the terrible trend of law enforcement officials unnecessarily shooting citizens' dogs, claiming (usually incorrectly) that the pets were behaving in a threatening fashion.
The studio has 15 days left to reach its goal of $100,000. They currently stand at less than $15,000. Their Kickstarter page describes more about their project:
When we first learned about puppycide, we assumed that these must be cases of police responding to threats on their lives from dogs trained to attack by criminal owners. That couldn't be further from the truth. We found scores of videos and news stories about dogs who were laying down, tails wagging, even running away but still shot by officers who used lethal force as their first and only response.
We were very upset by the footage and stories and felt a documentary on the topic was in need. We took our cameras on the road, reaching out to victims and capturing their experiences.
We also began exploring the police perspective, which is a vital part of this story. While some incidents involve callous officers too quick with the trigger, we found the issue is much bigger than that. The lack of repercussions, policy changes, new equipment, or apologies, demonstrate how systemic this problem is. Experts have explained in interviews how police officers are not currently offered the simple training, tools, and support they need to change.
The trailer features a couple of puppycide cases familiar with regular Reason readers and an appearance by former Reason editor and puppycide expert Radley Balko. Also on the Kickstarter page is a gallery of photos of dogs that have been shot by police if you feel like spending Halloween in a deep, angry funk.
As the trailer shows, they've done a lot of work on the documentary so far. This remaining $100,000 is, they explain, to "travel to incidents as they occur; step-up our inquiries through Freedom of Information requests of police records; shoot more interviews with owners, advocates, public figures and police; research and acquire footage of puppycides caught on tape; interview experts on dog behavior; participate in police ride-alongs and trainings; and find a home for the finished film."
The Kickstarter page is here.
More Reason on puppycide here.
UPDATE: As Reason commenter np noted, I initially had the donor numbers totally backwards. They've only raised $15,000 of the $100,000 they need.
The post Kickstarted Documentary About Puppycide Close to Donor Goal Needs Lots of Money appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Police allege Deirdre Romine took $2.87 from a fountain at the Logan County Courthouse in Ohio this month. Romine has said she didn't think the money belonged to anyone and she was jobless and trying to feed herself and her cats.
Police Chief Brandon Standley says Romine lied when an officer questioned her and found the change. He says that's why the officer determined a citation was merited.
The post Thousands Donated to Help Woman Charged with Stealing Change from Fountain appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The court hears oral arguments in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which reviews aggregate contributions limits on donations to candidates, political parties and political action committees (PACs).
The post Supreme Court To Consider Limiting Political Donations appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Ethan Whittington, of Midlothian, Va., traveled to Boston this week to meet with Glen James and give him the good news of his financial windfall.
James was hailed as a hero last month after he turned in a backpack he found at a mall. It contained more than $2,000 in cash and nearly $40,000 in traveler's checks.
The post Homeless Man Who Turned in Lost Cash Gets Crowd-Funded Reward appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The showdown coincides with the end of third-quarter fundraising period and political candidates, parties and outside groups have made it a theme of their frantic, last-minute pitches for cash.
Democrats, who view a shutdown as one of the best opportunities to retain control of the Senate in 2014 and possibly make gains in the GOP-controlled House, portrayed Republicans as recklessly endangering government operations by using a stopgap spending bill to delay implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
The post Politicians Use Potential Shutdown as Fundraiser appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>One of the costs Blondell Reynolds Brown had wanted to defray: fines previously imposed on her by that same Ethics Board.
"The prospect of an important, high-level city official soliciting and accepting unlimited gifts of money through a fund-raising event to pay personal debts is of great concern to us," the board said in an opinion posted on its website, not mentioning her name or identifying her office.
The post Philly Councilwoman Drops Plans for Fundraiser to Pay Debts appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The movie's web site.
The post <em>Atlas Shrugged Part III</em> Pursues Kickstarter Donations appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The gift announced in July was made up of stock in Universal Computer Systems Holding Inc. from the A. Eugene Brockman Charitable Trust, according to the college in Danville, Kentucky. It would have been one of the biggest donations in the history of U.S. higher education.
"The trust's intended major gift to fund the program was linked to a significant capital market event, which put considerable time pressure on efforts to structure the gift and the proposed scholarship program," John Roush, Centre College's president, said in a statement. "In the end, the parties determined that it was not possible to finalize these matters and get the required approvals from both sides in the time available."
The post Ky. College Loses $250 Million Gift appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>So here's a campaign donation regulation about which I was unaware and cannot possibly withstand a First Amendment constitutional challenge. Apparently, it is against the law for a candidate for office to suggest a donor give money to a friendly political action committee of a value that is greater than the donor could directly give the candidate. A donor can legally give more money to a PAC or a super PAC than he or she gives a candidate. But the candidate is not allowed to say so to the donor. Somebody on Rick Santorum's staff may have broken this rule, according to a complaint. Via the Washington Post:
A campaign finance watchdog has filed a complaint against former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum, referring to reports that Santorum or his campaign may have illegally urged a donor to donate $1 million to a super PAC supporting Santorum.
The donor, energy executive William Dore, in a recent interview said he approached Santorum about giving his campaign $1 million. He initially said Santorum urged him to instead give the money to the super PAC, Red White and Blue Fund, which can accept unlimited donations. Santorum's campaign is subject to much lower contribution limits and could not accept such a donation.
Dore later recanted, saying it was Santorum's staff who directed him to give to the super PAC.
The Campaign Legal Center, in its complaint, notes that campaign finance law allows candidates to solicit donations to super PACs, but those solicitations are subject to the same contribution limits as their campaigns. So while Santorum's campaign could tell Dore to contribute a maximum of $5,000 to the super PAC, it cannot urge him to donate $1 million to it.
This is patently absurd censorship.
The post Idiotic Campaign Finance Rule May Make You Feel Sorry for Rick Santorum appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The donor, energy executive William Dore, in a recent interview said he approached Santorum about giving his campaign $1 million. He initially said Santorum urged him to instead give the money to the super PAC, Red White and Blue Fund, which can accept unlimited donations. Santorum's campaign is subject to much lower contribution limits and could not accept such a donation.
Dore later recanted, saying it was Santorum's staff who directed him to give to the super PAC.
The post Santorum Accused of Steering $1 Million Donation to Super PAC appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Thirty-two people listed on federal campaign records as "deceased" have contributed more than $586,000 to congressional and presidential candidates and political parties since Jan. 1, 2009, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Federal Election Commission filings.
Last week, news emerged of a possible donation by a deceased contributor in a high-profile Senate race. A super PAC aiding Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's re-election reported Wednesday that it had received a $100,000 contribution from Houston home builder and GOP mega-donor Bob Perry on June 3 — nearly two months after his April 13 death.
The post Dead People Apparently Major Campaign Contributors appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The all-stock donation to Centre College from the A. Eugene Brockman Charitable Trust ranks among the 20 biggest gifts ever to a U.S. college or university, according to a list maintained by the Chronicle of Higher Education. It is the second-largest such gift to a U.S. school since 2011, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, surpassed only by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's $350 million donation to Johns Hopkins University announced earlier this year.
Centre will use the money to set up scholarships for students majoring in science, economics and computer science. Centre College President John A. Roush said the gift, which comes in the form of stock in Universal Computer Systems Holding Inc., represents a "fundamental transformation" in the school's ability to support students demonstrating leadership potential.
The post Small Kentucky College Lands $250 Million Donation appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>A federal jury reached the verdict in the case against real estate developer and once powerful lobbyist Harvey Whittemore.
The jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts on charges of making excessive campaign contributions, making contributions in the name of another and causing a false statement to be made to the Federal Election Commission.
The post Developer Convicted of Illegal Contributions to Sen. Harry Reid appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>American Unity PAC was formed last year to lend financial support to Republicans who bucked the party's longstanding opposition to gay marriage. Its founders are launching a new lobbying organization, American Unity Fund, and already have spent more than $250,000 in Minnesota, where the Legislature could vote on the issue as early as next week.
The group has spent $500,000 on lobbying since last month, including efforts in Rhode Island, Delaware, Indiana, West Virginia and Utah.
The post GOP Donor Group Pushes for Gay Marriage Recognition appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The Federal Election Commission on Thursday said no and cited the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as a reason in its advisory opinion.
DOMA defines marriage as between one man and one woman and states that spouse refers to the person of opposite sex. The Supreme Court in March sounded skeptical about the law, which prevents legally married gay couples from receiving tax breaks, survivor benefits under Social Security and other federal benefits.
The post FEC Rules Against Recognizing Donations from Gay Couples appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Organizing for Action shared its fundraising information in an email to supporters that stressed the number of small donors, noting that 109,582 people contributed an average of $44 each.
"To anyone who thought we couldn't do this, these numbers send a pretty clear message. It's never been done before, but supporters like you are doing it," wrote Executive Director Jon Carson.
The post Non-profit Promoting Obama Agenda Raises $4.8 Million appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The bill, HB 569, moves the contribution limits from $500 per election to $5,000 for candidates for governor, Cabinet-level offices and judges on the Florida Supreme Court. Legislative candidates could accept $3,000 checks directly to their campaign.
It requires more rapid disclosure online of who contributed and where the money was spent, mirroring federal law in the final 10 days before a general election with daily disclosure.
The post Florida House Passes Campaign Donation Reforms appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Dan Pallotta, founder of the California AIDS Ride and the Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk, gave a recent TED Talk asking whether nonprofits would be better off if they were allowed to behave more like for-profit companies. He argues that our cultural attitude toward charities – not allowing leaders to be paid competitively, resisting as much overhead as possible, and not allowing for risky charitable ventures that may take years to pay off – holds charities back and ultimately resigns donations to making up only two percent of our Gross Domestic Product.
Pallotta's TED Talk can be watched here. He goes through the mathematics of showing how non-profits that invest in growth systems typically associated with profitable companies may increase the total pool of charitable giving.
Pallotta doesn't talk about the difference in public versus private spending on aid for the needy in his talk. I did wonder how a change like he proposed would alter the mathematics that show 70 percent of private donations actually reaching the needy as compared to 30 percent of public aid programs. So much government aid spending gets consumed by bureaucratic "overhead." Would it be acceptable for only 60 percent of private donations reaching the needy if the end result also improved charitable giving to 3 percent of GDP?
Pallotta's argument is actually not new. His book, Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine their Potential, published in 2008, discussed these possible reforms. ReasonTV interviewed him in 2009. He discussed many of the same issues back then, which means we're way more in tune with innovation than those TED people.
Below is ReasonTV's interview with Pallotta from 2009:
The post Can Our Culture Accept Charities That Are Run Like For-Profits? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>White House press secretary Jay Carney offered a flat "no" when asked by reporters if donors to the group Organizing for Action — a spinoff of Obama for America — would be rewarded with quarterly meetings with Mr. Obama in exchange for their hefty contributions to the tax-exempt group.
"Of course not," Mr. Carney said "The president is engaged in an effort to pass items on his agenda. And outside organizations that support that agenda … like organizations that support his manufacturing agenda, administration officials can meet with them. This is an independent organization."
The post White House Denies Selling Access to the President appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>In all of 2011 and 2012, the NRA Political Victory Fund, the group's a political action committee, raised $14.4 million. Fundraising during that period averaged just over $600,000 per month. Their strongest fundraising occurred during August 2012, as the general election was gearing up, when the organization raised $1.18 million.
The post NRA Raised $1.1 Million in January appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>In a brief order issued on Tuesday, the court agreed to hear McCutcheon v Federal Election Commission, a challenge by Alabama businessman Shaun McCutcheon and the Republican national committee to limits on aggregate donations over a two-year period.
The post SCOTUS Will Consider Lifting Political Donation Caps on Individuals appeared first on Reason.com.
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